


The Signing of Contracts Through Blind Eyes

by classics_above_classics



Series: Alice Dorothy and Stories Set Elsewhere [2]
Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Allergy to Magic, Friends to Enemies, Guile Hero, Magic Debts, Manipulative Relationship, Non-binary character, Other, Waiving A Debt, invisible ink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 08:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18869398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/classics_above_classics/pseuds/classics_above_classics
Summary: Let it be said that Alice Dorothy does not waste time. The quicker she rids herself of her debts, the better.(It is a calculated risk, but she's decent at math.)





	The Signing of Contracts Through Blind Eyes

The school is sickening through the lenses of Alice Dorothy’s glasses. But the sickness comes with Sight, and that is trade enough. She can see what she was blind to before. And she can find a way to change it.

“There is a group of siblings known as the Fiddlers here,” Lento said once, in the roiling quiet of their shared dorm as she answered question after question. “They like to make deals. Only the one in culinary studies makes Deals, of course, Deals with a capital D, but all four are always eager to help with deals. The first offers protection, the second knowledge, the third retribution, and the fourth magic. And the deals they make are always fair.”

It’s these words that Alice D. remembers as she makes her way down the hall to the office that’s always open.

The office is the first sibling’s dwelling place, the area the more frightened students call Sanctuary. Whatever name was originally on the name plate has long since been scored out, covered by dents and scratches and burns. A piece of lined paper has been taped to it instead; it’s one with a child’s drawing of a cowboy hat in bright red ink. That’s as much a name as the first Fiddler has.

The door creaks as Alice Dorothy opens it. It is silent as it falls shut.

Oddly, even with the cloudy sky outside, the office is luminous in sunlight. It’s clean, the desks arranged and the shelves wiped down, but there are no teaching materials present anywhere. An array of old schoolbooks is stacked haphazardly by the closed window, and there’s a whirring ceiling fan rather than the air conditioner most of the classrooms favour. In all, the office makes her feel… old. Warm. It’s almost a good feeling.

“Morning, kid,” says a man at the teacher’s desk. He tips a cowboy hat in greeting. There are drawings on the brim of it, made in marker and pen, and they glitter a myriad of colours as a welcome before fading back into dark ink-black. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m indebted to my roommate,” Alice D. replies. “I’m here to request help regarding that.”

“So you need protection from a debt or two?” The man looks up, adjusting his thin spectacles, and- oh. She can see the shimmer of silver nitrate on the frames. Cat Eyes’ glasses. With some extra addition, maybe; there are little glass beads dangling from the tips. “No. From much more than two, then.”

D. can feel the flush grow on her face, angry and embarrassed and ashamed all at once. Her clicker sits weightily in her pocket. Four clicks as she entered the hall. Four clicks upon leaving, if everything goes well.

“You’re free to call me Cowboy,” the man remarks, tipping his chair back and resting his feet on the desk. There are unfamiliar carvings in the soles of his boots. For a moment, she wishes she knew what they meant. Only for a moment. “Nice to meet you, miss…?”

“Mx. Alice Dorothy, if you please.” D. slips a hand into her pocket, clutches tightly at what lies inside. Her clicker. Old nails. Little packets of salt. “Alice, Dorothy, or Alice D. is also fine.”

“Apologies, Mx. Dorothy.” There is something genuinely repentant in his tone, something familiar, but she can’t quite place it.

“It’s fine. That’s not what’s important here.” D. loosens her death grip on the nails. “What do I have to offer for protection?”

“That’s a risky statement,” Cowboy warns her, crossing his legs. “Better to state your terms first, then have them make an offer, and then you can bargain it down to something you can live with. Advice freely given.”

“… That’s helpful. I appreciate it.” No thank-yous. No more thank-yous. “I’d like for the debts not to affect me anymore. Or for them to be revoked. Every single one of them.”

“I can stop them from affecting you within the bounds of this office,” Cowboy offers, “but we both know that won’t last. If you like, we can trade in trinkets. I have a few that can cancel debts.”

“What’s the price?”

“Something for protection.” In a single smooth movement, Cowboy drops back to a proper sitting position, steepling his fingers against his chin. “Alternatively, a favour, for you to go on a quest. I’m running low on natural protections, see. There are a few places that grow important herbs which are only accessible to students.”

“And you’re not a student?”

“Not anymore,” Cowboy answers, and he does not elaborate. Alice D. doesn’t ask him to.

“What do the trinkets you offer do?” D. asks, changing the subject to something more useful. “Are they permanent?”

“Sadly, no. But they usually work for long enough.” The first Fiddler reaches into his pockets, setting three items down on the desk before him. The customary offer, then: three items, the last the most risky. She hopes one of them is enough to keep her safe forever. “First: a necklace charmed to look like whatever kind of necklace the recipient loves most. If anyone owes the wearer, those debts will be void for as long as they wear it.”

The necklace is cute, all silver and iron-wrought with a delicate, pastel charm of a book dangling from the chain. If Alice D. looks closely, she can read from it, can make out the words of shifting stories. Jay Gatsby, Alice Liddell, Dorothy Gale. She looks away.

“I’ll still be indebted if she takes it off.” And Lento will, of course she will, if she even accepts it at all. She’s too clever to accept gifts such as this. She’s too suspicious to trust something as spontaneous as this. “How does the second one work?”

“Second: a ring that protects the wearer from being commanded to do anything because of a debt.” Cowboy taps it lightly, and it glows faintly at his touch. “The debts still stand, though, and when you take it off, they’ll be able to command you again.”

Alice D. eyes it cautiously. It looks a little too big, a little too easy to lose in a crowd. And it’s conspicuous, too, exactly the kind of thing her roommate would question. It’d be a little too easy to steal off her finger in her sleep, a little too easy to wrestle off in a crowd. And rings have always felt off to her, constricting and chafing and wrong. She doesn’t trust herself not to “lose” it.

“No?” There is something almost sad in Cowboy’s tone, something soft and regretful. “Alright. Third: a blade that allows you to cut off debts. For every wound inflicted upon yourself, one of your debts disappears.”

D. wants to puke. Just a little bit. “How many wounds do you think I’ll need?”

Cowboy levels a dark look at the strings tying her to Lento. “Enough to land you in hospital.”

“Right.” She can’t pay for that. “… Can you tell me how to make my own protection? How to find things that protect me?”

“I can’t,” the man answers, regretful and remorseful, and the symbols on the brim of his hat cast odd shadows on his face in a glow of angry red. “I… I can’t. So says my deal.”

Well. Despite everything, Alice D. had hoped.

“You’re free to leave.” The door swings open, right back out into the empty hall. Cowboy smiles sadly, the glow of his symbols fading away. “My brother might have the information you want. He majors in bio-med. Ask Professor Neurophysical; she’ll know where to find my Johnny. That’s advice freely given, of course.”

“I appreciate it,” D. replies, inclining her head in a polite bow. “It was nice to meet you, Cowboy.”

“The same to you, Alice Dorothy.”

Out of the office and into the hall. It’s eight o’clock, A.M. and not P.M. So she and the Dorm 4 girls are in the clear.

She doesn’t click her protection away. Even the little that belief gives her will help.

⋈

The bio-med majors are in the hall when she finds the second Fiddler.

Johnny, his name is, and he’s easy to find when she’s in the right hall, with his hair dyed bright red and his glasses shimmering with silver nitrate. There are symbols sewn into the insides of his lab coat. Alice D. spots him with a psych major she’s seen sometimes, a T.A. who sometimes helps Professor Nan out. She has to cut through a crowd to chase him down.

“Excuse me, um- you’re Johnny, right?” D. has a death grip on her salt packets when he turns to her, looming a few uncomfortable inches above. “Your brother said you might be able to help me with a problem of mine. Cowboy?”

Something sharp glints in Johnny’s eyes.

“I’ll see you later, Litwick,” he says, waving the psych major off. When the nice-looking T.A. is gone, he looks back down, meeting D.’s gaze with a seriousness that wasn’t there before. “Do you want to talk somewhere more private, kid? If whatever it is was bad enough to warrant asking Cowboy, we probably shouldn’t be discussing it in a crowd.”

“Right! Of course.” She follows him blindly, weaving through students as he abruptly sets off.

They’re heading for the lab, she thinks, the one for the biology majors, which at least is emptier than the outer hall. Hell, it’s completely empty when they enter, save for the dissected animal parts in preservative jars. Alice D. very definitely does not look at the organs.

This place makes her feel sick. There’s a distinct _otherness_ to it, something tying it to the world in a twisting way. She thinks it’s the animals. She thinks it’s the dead.

Cutting something apart to know what’s inside it. Morbid, for the knowledge broker.

“What did you come here for?” Johnny asks, leaning comfortably against a metal table piled high with dissection trays and jars of hearts. “What do you need to know?”

“I need to know how to protect myself from debts. How to cancel the ones I owe now.” There aren’t any beads on Johnny’s glasses, none that she can see, and it shows in how he meets her eyes, in how he doesn’t even seem to notice the neon glow of her bonds. “I can’t do this. I can’t deal with so many.”

It’s not just the number that threatens her. It’s their power. But that’s unspoken, that’s obvious enough, and Johnny can probably see that, too.

“How many do you have?”

“At least eight hundred and ninety three.” She’d stayed up late while Lento was asleep, counted glowing strands with the sight granted by her tinted glasses until her mind gave out. “That’s on the left arm. I got to six hundred thirty two on the right before falling asleep. Around sixty on one leg, twenty on the other. And that isn’t everything.”

Johnny whistles lowly. “A thousand, six hundred, and five. That’s a lot of debts, kid. How’d you get that many?”

That’s the problem. She doesn’t know anymore. Was it every question, a string for each answer given? Was it for help studying, for every lesson, for any food offered or for little things like walking her to the dorm and letting her borrow a charger? When nothing is meant to be freely given, what offerings add up? How did she start to owe this much?

“I don’t know for sure. Hell, I’m starting to think I’m getting debts from breathing the same air as… her.” There are hot tears threatening to spill from her eyes. Alice D. wipes them away forcefully, grits her teeth and steels her nerves. “God. I want to tell you who it is. Will you use it against her?”

“I won’t,” Johnny answers, a sardonic slant in his grin. “I can’t. So says my deal and all. You’re free to tell me.”

“Lento.” Even that name makes her stomach churn. There’s so much magic. She can scarcely breathe with how much it sickens her. “Lento, Banjo Player, Bond Girl, Lyric-Weaver, Girl-Who-Plays-A-Thousand-Things. I hate her so, so _much_ -”

“Can’t help you with revenge,” the second Fiddler reminds her, the smirk falling from his lips. “And even if I could, I’d rather not have that girl wanting my head on a platter. There’s a reason no-one talks to her.”

“No-one talks to her?” But she seemed so personable, so… friendly. It felt like a world unto itself, talking to Lento.

But…

Alice D. had once been so angry that no-one seemed to stand up for her. She’d been so angry that no-one saw how beautiful she was, that no-one noticed how perfect she seemed to be. She’d been angry that no-one else seemed to want her.

No-one else did. No-one talked to her, not really. Lento was a world all unto her-self. She’d only ever really spoken to D.

“Right. No-one did.”

“You’re her roommate, aren’t you? The one Cat Eyes called Lost One.” It’s a pleasant surprise, really, that Cat Eyes actually changed what she called her after their last meeting, but D. can’t quite focus on it. “You’re an unlucky one, being stuck there with her. You want to request a move to the nb dorms? Moving to those dorms usually doesn’t take too long; only about twenty minutes, tops. They’re still pretty empty.”

“That won’t fix this problem.” Alice D. would love to move. She really, _really_ would. But right now, she doesn’t trust Lento to know even her gender, much less to stop caring about all the debts just because she wasn’t around anymore. “I need to fix this first.”

“I can tell you to go to my brother again. I can tell you to move dorms. I can tell you to get her to sign a written contract absolving you of all your debts, even. Seriously, try that out for me. I want to see if it actually works.”

“She reads everything given to her thoroughly.”

“Use some lemon juice instead of ink. You can get a lot of them from the communal gardens. Pick some from the lemon tree with the gold ribbon wrapped around it; my sibling doesn’t mind people taking lemons from their plant. Wait ‘till it dries, then find a way. I’m sure you’ll be smart enough to do it if you were smart enough to come to me.” Johnny runs a hand through his hair, his glasses catching the light of the sun just enough to make them glint dangerously. “Use the teachers. If there’s one thing Bond Girl has a blind spot for, it’s them. Students are, after all, much more suspicious.”

Use the teachers.

She has an idea.

“I appreciate it a lot!” Alice D. nods, unable to stop the crooked grin creeping onto her face. “I-”

There’s a new string on her left middle finger. Bright and blood-coloured and red.

“... What do I owe you for that?”

“I’d like a bit of information.” The symbols on the second Fiddler’s lab coat are glowing with a faint, nearly unnoticeable red. “Is there anything that you believe that doesn’t seem to work for anyone else? Something that protects you. Something I can make myself believe.”

For a moment, for a creeping, single moment, Alice D. thinks of her clicker.

Nope. _Nope._ That’s _hers_ , only hers, a protection she can control. She can’t tell him. She can’t.

But won’t that make it more protective? Won’t her belief that it works for her make it stronger?

Still…

“The hours eight and four protect all the girls in Dorm 4. Eight and four, A.M. and P.M., those are our safe hours. And…”

Yes. She can tell him. It’s not just her protection she should care about. That’s the kind of thinking that leads down dangerous roads, the kind of selfishness that makes her as sick as her strings. She wants to tell him.

“If you click something or tap something four times, you become protected. Click that same thing again four times and your protection ends. I use this.” Alice D. pulls her clicker from her pocket, lets Johnny’s hungry gaze fall upon it. “Anything can be used. Four to start protection. Four to end it.”

“I see.” The red string falls away, disappearing into the ether. “That’s a fair trade. Nice meeting you, Lost One. You’re free to go.”

“The same to you, Johnny.” D. nods, turning to the door and taking her leave. She wants out of that lab. It smells like death in there.

She has a sinking, creeping feeling that she’ll be seeing the Fiddlers again.

⋈

Sometimes, Alice Dorothy likes to think she’s clever too. Because she doesn’t have the influence that the Fiddlers or Lento do, doesn’t have the sheer God damned audacity to make deals and take debts. But she knows how to use her resources.

The wonderful thing about majoring in psychology is the surveys.

Her class that day has a whole lot of them; there are loads of possible things to have people take and draw conclusions from. And, lo and behold, all of them are written on paper.

Alice D. picks one excitedly: a questionnaire about people’s views regarding the most ethical solutions to problems with answers that range from utilitarian to pacifistic. It’s a wonderful choice. First off, it doesn’t draw too much attention; Lento knows about her interest in people, about her wondering how the mind works and what people would view as the best course of action. It’s not as conspicuous as, say, the one regarding what situations it would be appropriate to lie in, and even if this plan doesn’t work, she’ll love knowing the answers anyway. Second, it’s got just enough space in the heading and margins to write in an invisible agreement to waive all debts, with D.’s tiny handwriting and that nice pen she just used up all the ink of that has a 0.1 tip. If she washes out any leftover ink and replaces it all with lemon juice, she’ll be good as gold.

She borrows a funnel from the creepy dissection lab and fills up that nice pen with lemon juice for ink, drafting a hasty contract idea. During her lunch hour, she sneaks back to her dorm, packs up her clothes and important things and hides all of them in Cowboy’s office with his freely given permission. She requests a transfer to the non-binary dorms and finishes all the needed paperwork in fifteen minutes. She’ll ask people to answer her survey in study hall, which she shares with Lento. Then she can make a run for it.

Because she’ll probably have to make a run for it. If Lento finds out, she will.

She knows the way to the Café. It’s as safe a place as can be, in the halls of Elsewhere University. And she thinks she’ll be safe enough from Lento in there.

It’s a risky plan. It’s a risky gambit. But God damn it, she’ll take that risk if it means no more of these- these-

 _Strings_. She hates these strings.

Alice Dorothy likes to think she’s clever. It’s because she has to be.

⋈

“You’re really having me fill out one of these?” Lento complains, slumped across the table lazily and meeting Alice D.’s eyes with a pleading stare. They’re in the cafeteria, in their usual studying table, uncared for by the others present in the room. “Come on, Allie, I can barely focus on my essay on Bach or whatever this is. Can’t I have a little break?”

“You really can’t remember the topic of your essay?” D. speaks with a light tone that doesn’t match her worried thoughts, matching Lento’s position purposely and sliding the survey to her. The one with the invisible ink and carefully chosen agreement written on it, the one she worries about in the back of her mind. It’s still slightly damp, enough that the inked words should still be there. She’s worried, worried, so ungodly _worried_. “That’s not a good thing, you know.”

“Still! I have to focus!”

“It’s been proven that giving the mind a rest period after a period of stress allows people to focus more and focus harder. And the essay is stressing you out.” Alice D. taps the paper insistently, straightening up. Readying her body to get away. “Come on! There are no wrong answers, you know.”

“Ugh, fine. I’ll answer your survey.” Another gold string snaps into place. Lento takes the offered paper, uncapping her pen and scribbling her safename onto the blank required.

Every one of the strings is torn apart.

It’s like a weight being lifted from D.’s shoulders, like Atlas giving up the world on his shoulders to all-too-willing Hercules. She wants to laugh. She wants to cry. It feels so _good_ , not being tied to anyone. So- so-

Lento looks up, betrayed and realizing. Words are becoming visible in the sunlight, in the damp bits of the paper. Words that are all too damning.

_By signing this paper with your safename, you unconditionally agree to completely waive all debts and favours currently owed to you._

Alice D. shoves herself away from the table. And she makes a run for it.


End file.
